Active weather anticipated in near-term forecast for Western Sugar Farmers

WYOBRASKA – Another series of wintry weather systems are lined up to move through the Tri-State region in coming days which could impact the way producers are working even as harvest in what could conservatively be called a difficult growing season progresses.

Brandon Wills, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cheyenne, Wyo., said variable will be the watchword in terms of weather in the near future. From temperatures approaching the 70-degree mark to start off the weekend to a strong chance of snow showers in some areas as early as Sunday, Mother Nature will be taking additional swings at the region.

“There’s a good chance of snow showers on Sunday (following) a short-lived warming trend late in the week,” Wills said Tuesday. “Overall, it’s going to be an active weather pattern over the next week or so with temperatures decreasing down to more seasonal averages.”

The good news is snow is expected only at higher elevations. The other side of that coin, however, is lower elevations can still expect rain, Wills said, all courtesy of a series of cold fronts coming in “quick bursts” from Canada.

“And there will be some moisture associated with this because of the differences in temperature,” he said. “The good thing is, we’re not going to have nearly as cold a snap as we did a couple weeks ago. 

“The next weather system is coming into the area on Monday,” Wills said. “Some of the weather models disagree on the exact timing, but it will definitely bring more precipitation from Sunday into Monday.”

This weather system, and those following, are coming even as sugarbeet harvest is moving forward. Jerry Darnell, vice-president of agriculture for the Western Sugar Cooperative in Scottsbluff, Neb., said as of Tuesday morning, harvest was about 60 percent complete on acres in the Nebraska Panhandle and eastern Wyoming.

“We’re moving right along,” Darnell said. “We’re hoping to be about 80 percent complete by Sunday.”

Sugarbeets in the Wyobraska region have apparently recovered well from that cold snap earlier this month that definitively marked the end of the 2019 growing season. The Scottsbluff factory had limited deliveries of frozen sugarbeets from producers for a short time, but is now back at full capacity.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t any negative effects from the cold, however, Darnell said. Harvest issues are making themselves evident across the region from the freeze, he said.

“Most of the beets have healed up (from the freeze) into good, storable shape,” he said. “But the cold makes the top harder to defoliate, so we can get a clean root into the piles.”

Overall, the crop this year is averaging 16.1 percent sugar. During early harvest, the company was projecting 27 tons to the acre, which Darnell said is still the expected yield. The weather during the growing season just didn’t cooperate, he said, leading to the expected reduced yields.

“Sugar is going to be down from last year and tonnage will be down,” Darnell said. “We were projecting that, due to the late spring, the canal issues and quite a few hail storms. Now we had a freeze on top of it – Mother Nature has not cooperated this year.

“But sugarbeets are a great crop to be able to handle different types of stress,” he said. “The root goes down six-feet to
mine water.”

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October 31, 2019 at 10:38AM